Andrew Mitchell MP

The Hon Shane Stone AC QC is a former (Australian)
Attorney General, Police Minister and barrister who specialised in the criminal
jurisdiction – defence and prosecutions.

My arrival in London last week was framed
by two unfolding stories: first the tragic brutal slaying of two unarmed police
officers in Manchester; the second about a Cabinet Minister who gave a police
officer a gob-full out the front of 10 Downing Street. Hardly comparable events,
yet a week on and one has overshadowed the other – that is a travesty.

As I leave to return home to Australia
the senseless deaths of those two police officers has been overtaken by a
running commentary on “did he or didn’t he call the copper a ‘pleb’”. What is
wrong with you people? Its seems that this terminology is “toxic” according to
some, and the BBC to make the point (as they predictably would) featured one
Classics Professor Edith Hall who gushingly and somewhat sneeringly assured
viewers that this was an insult of monumental proportion. Really?

Andrew MItchell MP is Secretary of State for International Development. If you are interested in taking part in Project Umubano 2011, please email Abi Green in Stephen Crabb’s office.

When I first put the idea to David Cameron in 2007 of taking a few dozen members of the Conservative Party to Rwanda for an international development social action project, neither of us could possibly have known exactly how it would work out.

Four years on, Project Umubano (its name taken from the Rwandan word for 'friendship') has gone from strength to strength. There are now 30 Conservative MPs in the House of Commons who have taken part. Dozens of candidates, CCHQ and MPs' staff have given up a fortnight of their summer holidays. And more than a hundred activists have joined them, each able to pass on their own particular skills and expertise, whether it's medical or marketing, accountancy or advocacy.

Umubano has even moved beyond Rwanda. This year fifteen volunteers travelled to Sierra Leone - another African country with a deeply troubled past - as part of an expansion that began last year but has already grown significantly. Above all, Umubano is one of the only parts of the Conservative Party, or indeed any other political party, where the average age of participants is reducing every year. We are always delighted to see old hands return for the second, third, or even fourth times, but the ever more youthful crowd that is drawn to the project is a clear sign of its vitality.

Earlier today, for International Development Day, David Cameron visited Islamic Relief. In this Platform article, Andrew Mitchell, Conservative International Development Spokesman, sets out a clear, bold vision for a Conservative government: a world free from poverty.

Sometimes in politics – even amidst the frantic pace of an election campaign - you have to stand back and think big.

Forget the daily whirl of headlines, meetings and briefings, and focus on the issues that sometimes get lost among the noise.

Today, the International Development Day of the election campaign, is a time for politicians of all parties to do that – to set out the steps we will take to tackle killer diseases around the world, get children into school, and to help make poverty history.

Times are tight in the UK. My Party has been candid about the scale of the changes we’ll make to restore fiscal sanity and tackle Labour’s debt crisis. But it is when times are toughest that our deepest values shine through.

David Cameron and the Conservative Party are determined that we won’t let the poorest pay the price for Labour’s economic incompetence. That’s why we’ve ring-fenced the NHS budget. That’s why we’ve made clear that our public sector pay freeze will not apply to the million poorest workers. And that’s why we’ve pledged to increase life-saving international aid to 0.7% of national income by 2013 – and to legislate to lock-in that level of spending going forward.

We will not balance the books on the backs of the poorest – at home or abroad. This is the right thing to do. It’s simply absurd that during today, in the year 2010, 30,000 children will die from easily-preventable diseases like diarrhea.

Well-spent British aid will save millions of lives in the years ahead. Aid has helped to eradicate smallpox, reduce polio cases from 350,000 a year in 1988 to just 1,500 last year, and to increase the number of people on vital anti-Aids drugs from 400,000 in 2003 to more than 4 million in 2008.

Andrew Mitchell MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, recently became the first senior British politician to visit Zimbabwe in an official capacity in many years. Here, he writes about the progress he witnessed that has been made in recent months – and the challenges that remain.

This time last year the shops in Zimbabwe were empty, a cholera crisis that went on to claim over 4,000 lives was sweeping the country, most schools were shut and hyper-inflation of over 200 million per cent was raging. Today, markets across the country are coming back to life, most schools have re-opened and the faltering economy is being resuscitated.

Individual Zimbabweans are beginning to get on with the business of making a living again. At a township outside Harare I met Sammy, a young entrepreneur whose market stall was crushed by Zanu PF bulldozers before the election during a clearance operation aimed at scattering the MDC’s urban voters. Sammy now has a permanent hardware stall in the newly rebuilt Chitungwiza market, and he and a group of neighbouring stallholders are helping each other get by with a group savings and loans scheme. Around the corner, a father showed me around his carefully grown garden in which he had coaxed rows of lush green vegetables from the red earth so that he could feed himself and his family.

The tectonic plates of Zimbabwe are shifting. There has been considerable progress given the extraordinary circumstances, and it is almost exclusively down to the determination of Morgan Tsvangirai and his colleagues in the MDC. The events of last spring, when Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF cronies stole the Presidential election, eventually gave way to a power-sharing agreement which so far appears to be holding. Zanu PF hoped that by giving the MDC the most difficult portfolios – the ones that would most affect the lives of ordinary people – the MDC’s failure would rebound to their discredit and Zanu PF’s advantage. The opposite has been the case.

Andrew Mitchell MP is Shadow Secretary of State for International Development and has recently returned from a visit to Iraq, where he observed for himself the work of DFID on the ground.

While everyone is rightly debating the structure and process of the long-overdue inquiry into the Iraq War, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the crucial question of how effective British aid and development efforts in Iraq have been.

The questions around our reconstruction effort are particularly disturbing. In the run up to the 2003 invasion, the Department for International Development was run by the anti-war Clare Short, who eventually quit the Cabinet in protest. Some observers claim that this set the tone for the rest of DFID’s work in Iraq. Many staffers resented the fact that DFID had to shut down its work in Latin America in order to fund reconstruction in Iraq. Some in DFID regarded the Iraq aid programme as an "ugly duckling", a politically-driven enterprise in a middle-income country, very different from DFID’s "home turf" of large, poor sub-Saharan African countries.

There have been real tensions between DFID and the military on the ground in Iraq. They subscribe to fundamentally different visions of the meaning of development and reconstruction. The military tend to focus on quick results and physical reconstruction. DFID tends to focus on long-term capacity building in the central government. Both approaches have their merits and demerits. But there is a sense that the two models have failed to be joined-up in Iraq.

Andrew Mitchell, the shadow international development secretary, recently returned from the Kenya-Somalia border. Here he argues that as well as taking the fight to the pirates at sea, the root causes of the problem must be tackled.

The terrifying ordeal last month of Captain Richard Phillips, the US seaman captured by pirates, has brought home to the world the scale of the threat posed by pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden and beyond.

We must tackle this threat head on – the free world cannot allow renegade hostage-takers to bring international trade to a halt and block up one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. And although to date the pirates have been more interested in taking ransoms than lives, we must work on the basis that they could soon add deliberate murder to their tactic book.

But let us be clear: the threat extends beyond the immediate danger to ships and their crews. The piracy we are seeing is a direct consequence of prolonged state failure and instability in Somalia, which has the potential to destabilise the whole region and export terrorism and disease to our own shores – as well as deepening the already appalling humanitarian crisis.

Andrew Mitchell MP is shadow international development secretary and has just returned from a visit to Israel, Palestine and the Gaza border. He writes about his experiences here.

Last week, as the dust began to settle after three weeks of Israeli military action in Gaza, I flew to Israel and the Palestinian Territories to see for myself the situation on the ground. No one doubts the urgent need for humanitarian aid. But is it getting through and what more can be done?

There has been endless claim and counter-claim about whether aid is getting through. I found a mixed picture. I was told that although Gaza needs at least 500 trucks of aid every day, only 120 are getting through. Shortages of even basic goods there have made prices skyrocket. Clearly we need to get more aid in – and British NGOs have an important role to play.

Some supplies are coming in from Egypt through the warren of tunnels dug under the border. Some of the tunnels are so large that cars can be driven through them. Israel insists that the tunnels must be closed down before it opens its borders – they argue that otherwise weapons and military supplies will come in through the tunnels, letting Hamas rearm and taking us back to square one. This is a legitimate concern – but it is also vital that Israel allows unfettered humanitarian aid through the official crossings into Gaza.

Andrew Mitchell MP, Shadow International Development Secretary, reflects on his visit to the UN climate change talks in Poznan and what the outcome of the talks means for the world's poorest people.

The world's very poorest people are already being hit hard by the effects of climate change. For millions of poor people, the effects of global warming are not just an abstract concern but a daily peril. Farmers in Uganda who used to plant their crops by the seasons can no longer predict when the rain will come. Families in the mountains of Nepal face floods on an increasing and ever more devastating basis. Communities in Bangladesh – and, in fact, whole island nations like the Maldives and Tuvalu – risk seeing their homes literally submerged for good as temperatures and therefore sea levels rise. Desertification in Sudan has, many argue, contributed to the tensions in Darfur. Put bluntly, climate change threatens to drown, starve or kill many people in developing countries in the years ahead.

Most developing countries have hardly contributed to climate change and won't be doing so for the foreseeable future. Alongside the Chinas and the Indias – whose growth is pulling millions of people out of poverty but also pouring millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year – are the Zambias, the Malis and the Nigers, whose economies are rooted in subsistence farming or small-scale agriculture. Countries like these have the right to expect support from those that have polluted the most

So while progress is essential on agreeing emission reductions targets for industrialised and industrialising nations, world leaders also needed to get closer at this week's UN climate change conference to an effective and equitable deal for those on the other side of the problem. A new UN Adaptation Fund was approved in principle in Bali a year ago. The Fund was designed to help developing countries prepare for the current and future effects of climate change and, provided leaders could nail down agreement over the details, be up and running fairly quickly. It would then provide the starting point for a bigger fund in a post-Kyoto treaty.

The challenge this week in Poznan was to turn aspiration into reality. And as the conference drew to a close, management of the Adaptation Fund was, indeed, eventually agreed – meaning that money can now be disbursed to poor countries who urgently need it as early as next year. But real progress will now be essential over the next 12 months on fleshing out the details of a bigger fund for the longer term. Solid agreement will be required on the true scale of the need, how much it will cost, where funds should come from and how they should be spent.

Andrew Mitchell is Shadow Secretary of State for International Development

I recently returned from a visit to Goma in the East of Democratic Republic of Congo to see for myself the desperate humanitarian situation on the ground. I crossed into Goma from Gisenyi in Rwanda – the contrast between the two towns could not be starker. Gisenyi – a developing town on the shores Lake Kivu. Goma on the other hand is covered by the black ash of the Nyamuragira volcano, which has rendered the land barren and useless to the local people. The roads are rutted and potholed – where there are any.

Fighting erupted over a month ago between the Congolese army and General Laurent Nkunda’s rebel forces. Nkunda’s rebel force exists on the pretext of protecting the Congolese Tutsi population from the existence of the FDLR in eastern Congo, who are the remnants of the genocidaires that perpetrated the Rwandan genocide in 1994. They organised and carried out the murder of 800,000 Rwandans. The Congolese army, a fractious and dysfunctional force has not been able to remove the FDLR, nor successfully tackle Nkunda’s rebels. MONUC, the UN force in the DRC, is engaged in the Congo to provide support for the Congolese government in dealing with these issues.

I went to the headquarters of MONUC in Goma to meet the UN civilian and military leaders and to find out exactly what is happening on the ground. The structure of the HQ reminded me of my experiences as a UN peacekeeper in Cyprus in 1975. The same style of white portakabins, furniture and paraphernalia of bureaucracy – with the military maps clearly showing the disposition of up to 22 armed groups throughout the Congo.

However MONUC also reminds us of the failures and disaster of UNAMIR – the UN force present in Rwanda at the time of the genocide in 1994. MONUC has a Chapter 7 mandate from the international community, which in theory means that it should have the ability to use force to protect civilians. But the reality is that MONUC’s capabilities rest on a structure that is much more limited and would normally be associated with a Chapter 6 mandate, which provides for them to monitor and observe an existing peace which is not the situation in the Congo.

I met General Bipin Rawat who commands the UN brigade in North Kivu and who set out the practical difficulties that MONUC faces on a daily basis – no capability for night flights, no ammunition replenishment between Fridays at 5pm and Mondays at 9am because of civilian contracting rules. Little chance of moving unseen to accomplish their objectives – their aircraft and vehicles are painted white against a black tarmac. The blunt truth is that, if Goma is attacked, MONUC will not be able to protect the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled from their homes to Goma and the surrounding area.

Andrew Mitchell MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, reflects on Project Umubano, the Conservative Party's social action project in Rwanda.

For two weeks this summer, 104 Conservative volunteers travelled to Rwanda to take part in the second year of Project Umubano, our international social action project.

We kept ConservativeHome readers updated with a series of despatches on different aspects of the project. Tobias Ellwood MP described his team’s work in building a Community Center for families affected by the genocide. Fiona Hodgson described her work on women’s rights (and we read this week that there are now a record number of female MPs in Rwanda). And Rob Halfon wrote movingly about his time teaching Rwandan teachers.

We aimed to make a modest contribution to development in one of the world's poorest countries, and in that I think we succeeded. But in addition, many of our volunteers have told me that they benefited – through new experiences, discoveries, friendships and insights – just as much as they contributed.

As the Conservative Party's Project Umubano gets underway, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development Andrew Mitchell MP sends this moving update from Kigali.

Our Project has got off to a great start. Remarkably, all of our volunteers arrived in Kigali safe and sound and pretty much on time on Saturday – together with all their luggage, textbooks, 1,520 English dictionaries, and crates of medical equipment and school supplies. This compares well to last year, when we turned up at the airport to find our flights had been cancelled!

On Sunday our project rightly started on a sombre note, as all of us visited the national genocide memorial in Kigali. This is an extraordinarily moving experience. We laid a wreath to commemorate the nearly one million people who were killed during the civil war and genocide of 1994.

For me, the most moving aspect of the memorial exhibition is a stark, simple set of pictures of smiling children, each next to a small plaque. One plaque reads:

Andrew Mitchell MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, explains what the Party will be doing in Rwanda this year.

Today, over 100 Conservative volunteers will come together in Rwanda
for the start of Project Umubano 2008. They will continue the work
started there by the Conservative Party last summer.

The volunteers will focus on five areas: health, education, justice,
the private sector, and a community centre construction project. The
volunteers include doctors, nurses, entrepreneurs, teachers, lawyers,
parliamentary researchers and local councillors. The Parliamentary
Party is represented by ten MPs joining the project, alongside eleven
Prospective Parliamentary Candidates. The Project takes place for two
weeks and the volunteers cover the costs of their flights and
accommodation.

The aim of the project is, above all, to make a very modest
contribution to a country which represents both the best and worst of
Africa: the worst because of the terrible events of 14 years ago when
nearly a million people were massacred in a carefully-organised
genocide; and the best because this is a country determined to break
out from the shadow of its recent past, and which has made great
progress since 1994. We also hope the project will help educate and
inform our volunteers about the challenges of international
development. We are travelling with open minds and a willingness to
learn as well as to teach. For many of the volunteers last year, their
time in Rwanda was a genuinely life-changing experience.

Andrew Mitchell MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, argues that the West and the UN also bear responsibility for the lack of progress in Darfur.

As the Olympic torch continues its controversial ‘long march’ towards
Beijing, the placard-wielding demonstrators lining the route have a
litany of concerns: political prisoners, falun gong, Tibet, Burma and
Taiwan. On today’s Global Day for Darfur, the focus will be on China’s
economic and diplomatic support for the military regime in Khartoum.
The issue has already led Steven Spielberg to pull out of being the
head filmmaker for the Olympics, wishing to avoid playing a Leni
Reifensteil-esque role in legitimising the 2008 Olympics.

But China is not the only country whose policies towards Sudan need to
change. Instead of smugly congratulating ourselves about our
enlightened approach, we in the West need to do more to help secure an
end to the violence in strife-torn Sudan.

William Hague MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary, and Andrew Mitchell MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, urge the international community to not squander the narrow window of opportunity that Mugabe's exit will create.

Four days after the presidential and parliamentary elections in
Zimbabwe, its people still do not know who will lead their country. By
its own account, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF is just two seats ahead of the
Opposition MDC in the parliamentary elections. And in the contest for
the Presidency, even despite the possibility of large scale voting
fraud, it seems that Robert Mugabe has not secured victory.

But as Robert Mugabe contemplates his immediate future, it is clear
that no course of action can make his rule infinite. There will be a
day after Mugabe. His political demise could come swiftly or still be
some way off, but the status quo has now been upset.

So while keeping up the pressure on the regime now, in the form of
targeted EU sanctions and tough diplomacy, our strategy must comprehend
the possibility of a dramatic change in Zimbabwe’s domestic politics.

The international community has a duty to prepare for that moment, to
ensure that we can assist in the country’s difficult transition from
authoritarian rule and economic and social collapse

Andrew Mitchell MP is Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.

In the lush green jungles of Sierra Leone last week, I met British soldiers who are training one of the world's least developed armies in the art of jungle warfare. I stood with British Officers on a narrow ridge high above the Guma Dam, looking down as, in a simulated firefight, Sierra Leonean troops demonstrated a casualty extraction exercise in the thick, matted tropical undergrowth. Later they showed us an array of traps that their soldiers use on patrol - some to catch food, others to ensnare enemy fighters.

Today there are some 70 British troops stationed in Sierra Leone under the auspices of IMATT, the International Military Advisory and Training Team. Brigadier Powe, the British military commander, explained that the skills of the Sierra Leonean troops have developed considerably over the last eight years. He was clear that British support has made a huge difference.

Tony Blair's record on humanitarian intervention will forever be overshadowed by the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq. But his earlier foray into using British military force to do good in Sierra Leone should be judged more kindly by historians. Eight years ago Sierra Leone was menaced by gang warfare and the terrifying West Side Boys, who were infamous for amputating limbs, widespread rape and the use of child soldiers. When our troops landed in Freetown they found one of the leading towns of West Africa, famous for its wealth, education and civilisation on independence from Britain in the 1960s, reduced to a form of evil barbarity, with a population living in appalling conditions often sleeping rough and in terror.